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Jose Bautista blast ends hellish Toronto Blue Jays road swing

Toronto heads home to face AL East foes after 2-6 trip

Jose Bautista #19 and Jose Reyes #7 of the Toronto Blue Jays celebrate Bautista's three run homer against the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park on August 20, 2014 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Tom Lynn/Getty Images)

MILWAUKEE — In the sixth inning, the Blue Jays began to exhale for the first time in more than a week.

The game was not over, not by a long shot. But a long shot by Jose Bautista — a line drive into the left-field bullpen — had the Jays believing that good things were possible again, after a stretch in which every turn seemed to lead into a dark alley.

“That home run by Jose was the difference in the game,” starter R.A. Dickey said after the Jays beat the Milwaukee Brewers 9-5. “You kind of (felt) this collective sigh on the bench. It was like, ‘OK, finally, here we go.’

“We’re going to try and build on this. We get to go home and we’re not out of it by any stretch of the imagination.”

Thus ended one ragged road trip. The Jays won only twice in eight games. But for the players and their fans, Wednesday’s finale brought a boost that was long overdue, along with important contributions from everyone in the starting lineup (not to mention several from the supporting cast).

The nine-run total was the Jays’ highest since July 28 — 20 games ago — when they beat Boston 14-1, also with Dickey pitching.

Trailing 3-2 in the sixth, they scored five runs, which is more than they had totalled in 11 other games this month.

The rally started at the bottom of the order — consecutive doubles by Josh Thole and Munenori Kawasaki — and continued through the top, with singles by Jose Reyes and Melky Cabrera.

And then came the Bautista blast that changed the dugout ambience in a heartbeat.

Coming with two outs, it was the sort of clutch hit that has typically eluded the Jays during an awful August.

“Yeah, definitely,” manager John Gibbons said. “We’ve been searching for that thing.”

After an off-day Thursday, the Jays play Tampa Bay on Friday night in the opener of a nine-game homestand. The Red Sox and Yankees visit next week.

Milwaukee Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy can’t handle the throw as Toronto Blue Jays’ Munenori Kawasaki slides safely home during the sixth inning of a baseball game Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2014, in Milwaukee. Kawasaki scored from second on a hit by Jose Reyes. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Every one of Toronto’s eight starting position players — this was a National League park, remember — had at least one hit. Reyes had three, the top four hitters in the lineup combined for nine and the team had 15, the sort of bounty they had not enjoyed since that rout of the Red Sox.

Dickey called it a “community win” and so it was, with the bullpen blanking the Brewers after Dickey left in the sixth and Steve Tolleson, subbing late for Kawasaki at second base, making a terrific defensive play — a diving stop and backhand flip to force a runner at second — that thwarted a budding Milwaukee threat.

Gibbons called it the play of the game.

The manager used 18 players, including pitcher Marcus Stroman as a pinch-runner. He was on base when Colby Rasmus hit a homer that lengthened the lead to 9-5 from 7-5 in the ninth.

“Everybody, outside of myself, I thought did a great job today,” Dickey said.

His knuckleball moved effectively during the first five frames, but after the Jays’ big rally in the sixth gave him a 7-3 lead, he promptly surrendered a two-run homer to Carlos Gomez and was done for the day. Dickey felt that was an affront to his offence.

“It’s great to have an inning where you put a crooked number up there,” he said. “I feel like we’ve been overdue for that. That’s kind of our calling card, being able to put up big innings and we haven’t had one in a while.

“That’s why it’s so frustrating when you go out there and you don’t have a shutdown inning, just because you know how hard those guys at the plate are battling to have an inning like that for the team.”

Aaron Sanchez shut the door through the seventh, and when Brett Cecil put two runners on in the eighth, Dustin McGowan came on and enticed a 1-6-3 double-play grounder from Jonathan Lucroy.

The off-day is the team’s fourth this month and might not be as welcome as most, Gibbons said.

“At one point you can’t wait to have (an off-day),” he said. “Now you’d like to go out and play again tomorrow after today’s game. But we’ll get rested up. It’s a big homestand.”